Ghastly fun, chilling and sharp (Spoilers!)

Rating: 8/10 (28 June 2003)

Danny Boyle tips his cap to George Romero's "Dead Trilogy" and Boris Sagal's "The Omega Man" a highly underrated sci-fi film starring Charleton Heston. "28 Days Later" is a crisp horror movie. It has the positives of being a gritty, realistic low-budget film without the drawbacks of bad acting, cheap thrills or pretentious ham-handed preaching.
There are a few particularly horrifying (startling) moments in the movie including the scene in the church, the "candle" scene, the stairwell scene. On another level of fear: Excellent tension is sustained, both in leaving the city (an eerie tunnel sequence pays homage to Stephen King's "The Stand") as well as the strange quirks of the rag-tag military group. The final level of fear is the societal implications. Are we truly a society of consumer-crazed aggression? Is everybody else a danger to us? It certainly puts the condition of our species under the microscope. There is a scene in the film (in the store) straight out of "Dawn of the Dead" and the captive "infected" is reminiscent of Bub in "Day of the Dead". It is worth seeing in a darkened theater to heighten the impact.